


born of fracture

by TheSpaceCoyote



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Character Interpretation, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Feelings Realization, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Major Character Injury, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Praetorian Guard Hux, Rescue, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, implied brainwashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-04
Updated: 2019-09-04
Packaged: 2020-10-10 02:37:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20520569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSpaceCoyote/pseuds/TheSpaceCoyote
Summary: Amidst the carnage of his master's throne room and the devastating severance of his bond with Rey, Kylo takes solace in an unexpected kinship—with one of Snoke's former guards.





	born of fracture

**Author's Note:**

> Finally! I've been working on this piece for a few weeks now, inspired by conversations with my friend ArsTyrannus, who also made some lovely [art](https://twitter.com/arstyrannus/status/1162855931178299392) of poor Praetorian Hux. 
> 
> Hope you guys like it or find it interesting!

Kylo Ren woke as if from a fitful dream, into a new world of death and fire. 

The durasteel floor conducted heat too well for him to rest against it much longer, forcing him to rouse. Even through the thick material of his tunic and leather of his gloves, Kylo felt it radiating off the surface beneath him as he regained consciousness. It singed, the pain making him flinch, but it also helped to drag his memories back within his grasp, to ground him in reality. Snippets of images flashed across his mind, guided by the sweat trickling through the furrows in his forehead as they gradually connected into a comprehensible whole. 

_ His Master. The girl. The saber. _

Kylo winced at the warmth beneath his clothing, at the memories lancing through him like wounds freshly reopened. The air in the throne room still burned, restless, even though the fighting has long extinguished. How much time had passed, Kylo could not say. But the girl was gone. Snoke was gone.

Everyone. Gone.

Only he remained.

Kylo forced his eyes open. His body groaned with a chorus of aches as he rolled himself onto his front and wedged a knee beneath his belly. He pushed his palms against the floor, propping up his upper torso as he lifted his head, assuming the same stooped servility he had found himself locked into countless times in the past. But right now he felt no yoke weighing atop his shoulders, no noose around his neck, no hammer of his Master’s anger waiting to fall.

He was free at last. Then why...

..._Why did it feel so strange? _

Kylo pawed at his chest, drawing torrid, stifling wind into his lungs. The sound of his breath echoed around the vast throne room, the only disturbance apart from the crackle of flame. It shouldn't be so quiet. There should be another strong presence here, standing beside him, helping him rise. 

He shouldn’t _ be _ alone. 

Kylo let out a furious snort, digging long lines across the breast of his tunic. 

The empty anger inside of him should have been quenched, but instead it yawned and kept him hollow and hot, skin barely containing the furious pressure inside him. All due to that _ girl _ and her pitiful attachments. Kylo clenched one hand into a trembling fist, seams in the leather creaking. He had killed Snoke for the both of them, so they could be free, so they could _ rule _ as twin entities, towering spires of the Force finally quelling the chaos engendered by the Jedi—

—and she had _ abandoned _ him. Immolated his offer in the explosion of Vader’s shorn lightsaber, leaving the connection in his mind cut off and cauterized. 

Kylo slammed his knuckles into the floor with a mindless grunt, hot air rippling around him. The shockwave rattled the debris scattered across the floor as the Force lashed around him; ever the echo of his emotions. For a moment Kylo could do nothing more than tremble in silence, consumed and lost in the angry, storming depths of his own mind. 

A faint, hoarse gasp forced him back to the surface.

Kylo jerked his head up, suddenly stiff and alert. He’d disregarded the benefit of his extrasensory perception in his rage, not bothering to check whether there was anyone still alive within the throne room. He’d assumed there wouldn’t be, not after the girl had left; but there was something stirring now, in the periphery of his mind. Both calling out to him and shirking, as if tangibly afraid to draw him near. Like prey. 

Kylo glanced about the throne room, eyes furtive and bright with feverish caution. The bodies of seven of Snoke’s elite guard lay spread out around him, their armor burnt, limbs and heads alike separated from their torsos. Kylo strained, reaching out with the Force to seek any thread of life still inexplicably clinging to their bodies. He grasped nothing. But the troubling sounds continued, drawing Kylo’s eyes to a smear of blood on the mirrored durasteel floor. He turned his head, following it towards Snoke’s throne. There he saw the source of the sound and the crippled presence; the missing member of the Praetorian Guard, crawling on their hands and knees behind the former seat of Snoke’s power. 

The very last one left alive. 

Kylo rose to his feet, jaw wound tight with resolve. The Force concentrated at his palms, hungry for vengeance. 

_ Not for long. _

Kylo stalked towards the downed Praetorian, boots a steel clamor of a dirge across the floor. He could hear muffled but harsh coughing reverberating around inside their mask, followed by the slick splatter of vomiting blood. Their life force fluttered in pain. 

Kylo’s saber flew to his hand, snarling into life. It burnt a pitiless pillar of red through the air, the crackle of plasma cutting into the smoldering quiet of the throne room. The Praetorian stiffened at the sound, head jerking up as they tried to sit back on their knees to face him. Kylo stopped a couple of paces from where they crouched, his blade held out to the side. Darkness flitted across Kylo’s hard expression to sink deep into his eyes as they drifted in callous appraisal over the Praetorian’s form.

It wasn’t hard to see that they were grievously injured, even with the way they hung forward, as if their weighty pauldrons were pulling them towards the ground, to rest. Two fissures cut across the chest plate in a messy X, the marmoreal plastoid around them cracked and melted like a ruinous crater impacted in earth, the well-crafted material proven ultimately unable to stand up to the might of a lightsaber. Beneath the shattered husk of armor Kylo could see their chest rapidly rising and falling, beating like the wings of a dying bird against its cage. Almost pleading, penitent. But a glimpse of vulnerable human flesh alone would never be enough to earn mercy from a man like Kylo Ren, to stay his hand from tightening around the haft of his weapon as he glared through this last remnant of his Master’s reign. Kylo could already see the new future that yawned before him, recovered from the machinations of others by his own hand; nothing of Snoke’s remained within it. 

But then the Praetorian tilted their head further upwards, sensing Kylo’s proximity, the borders of his rage now enveloping them. The smashed plastoid on the left side of their face crumbled away as they moved, clattering in unexpectedly fragile shards upon the floor. 

Kylo froze, his fingers twitching in shock around his saber’s hilt. From beneath the broken mask glared a single eye, brilliant green slanted by a sharp brow and framed all around in fragments of red. Blood stained down most of the Praetorian’s face exposed by the hole in the helmet, leaving only streaks of porcelain skin in its wake. There was so much, fountaining from unseen wounds, that red even swam in the white of the Praetorian’s eye, staining it deep. Even so, his gaze flashed with an unwavering, mystifying intensity, one that kept Kylo locked in place to a degree so sudden and rigid that he almost checked whether he’d been struck by a surprise blow. 

It didn’t shock Kylo that Snoke’s guards were human beneath the shell of their armor. He had fought them, countered the fluidity and fallibility characteristic of organic fighters. The sleek red carapaces encouraged uniformity and solidarity amongst their ranks, symbolizing their joint commitment in guarding the Supreme Leader. It shouldn’t matter that the last survivor was human beneath all that; Kylo had killed hundreds, if not thousands of humans before. Many had begged for their lives in a lot more piteous a fashion than the Praetorian’s bold silence, and still they'd died by his blade. 

Regardless, that single eye transfixed him, its green maelstrom amidst gradient seas of red sparking an odd heat in Kylo’s heart unlike any of those fires that licked the air around him, burning the last trappings of the throne room to ash. 

Kylo could vaguely sense the Praetorian’s thoughts as they leaked out in a rush, as if the shattered hole in the helmet permitted them to finally flow through unfettered. They had little coherence to them, but impressed a distinct picture upon Kylo’s mind as he let them in; a splendor of thought-to-be-dead embers flourishing anew, white-hot, eager to break free and incinerate the dead wood that had kept them smothered. A profound, strangely familiar vision that spoke to him, to the juvenile fears of the Kylo he kept buried deep inside his soul. Unease tickled on the back of the neck, as if there was something here in the margins, some other, terrible secret even he wasn’t aware of. 

_ Just a child in a mask_, Snoke’s voice haunted, unbidden, before Kylo forced it away and crushed it.

A full-body shudder suddenly rattled the Praetorian, visible even beneath the armor. It disrupted the flow of already muddled thoughts seeping into Kylo’s, leaving little more than the echo of pain. Kylo heard him cough, swaying in his kneeling position, but his gaze never wavered. 

A twitch in his peripheral vision brought Kylo out of the trance. His eyes flicked downwards, spying the Praetorian’s segmented fingers as they groped towards the sword lying on the ground beside him. Kylo stiffened, pulling out of the illusion of the green eye and back into reality. Was this it? Was he planning to make a last stand? A final, foolish act of defiance, even though Snoke lay dead and in pieces at the foot of his own throne? 

Kylo raised his saber in warning, blade eating through the shimmering air. “Halt,” he ordered, voice rough from disuse. “Your master is dead. Do not reach for your weapon, or I will have no choice but to execute you.”

But the Praetorian didn’t stop, paying little heed to Kylo’s words as if he hadn’t even heard them. Maybe he couldn’t, what with the extent of his wounds. Maybe this was all he had the strength left to do. 

Kylo watched with mounting disquiet as the Praetorian retrieved his fallen weapon, lifting it up off the floor with a trembling hand. He forced it to mold solidly around the grip with a deep intake of breath. Firelight glinted along the geometric designs etched into the basket hilt, beading down to the tapered point of the blade. Kylo gritted his teeth. He no longer felt awash with desire to slay the master of that green eye, but if the Praetorian tried to kill him, he wouldn’t hesitate to save his own life. It would be foolish to fall to a nameless guard, when he had bested so many to get to this point. 

However, rather than retaliate against Kylo with one last, futile strike, the Praetorian tilted his head back, keeping their gaze locked. An audible gulp of air, and he turned the blade towards himself. Kylo flinched and raised his hand, half expecting the well-honed tip to thrust through his chest so the Praetorian could die alongside his comrades, rather than suffer the indignity of an execution at Kylo’s hands. 

But it didn’t. Instead, the Praetorian brought the flat of his blade to rest against his breastplate, right over the enduring beat of his heart. 

Silence followed, a diaphanous tension Kylo was unwilling, even afraid to break, for once unsure of what was about to happen. And then; a voice slurring and viscid with bloodied spit, but resounding with far more resilience than Kylo could have ever expected.

“Long...” the Praetorian proclaimed, staining the words against the inside of his helmet with his last ounce of strength, “...long live the Supreme Leader.”

And with that, the exposed eye rolled back into his skull and fluttered closed. Kylo fell with the Praetorian as he lost consciousness, stowing his saber and dropping to his knees. He ignored the pain throbbing through his bones and dove forward, catching the Praetorian before he hit the ground and letting them instead collapse against his steady bulk. The heavy, broken helmet flopped against Kylo’s shoulder, the Praetorian’s body going completely limp beneath the armor. Kylo’s hands found his waist, right where the hard armor flowed into a kilt of silken cloth, and gripped it tightly. He felt surprised at his own sudden reaction, his instinct to hold a former enemy in such an intimate fashion, but he refused to let go. 

Around them the fires of the duel dwindled to nothing, leaving only streaks of soot and despoiled steel in their wake. After a moment, Kylo shifted the Praetorian in his hold until he lay draped over his arms, then looked down upon him. Dauntless fingers still gripped the hilt of his weapon, blade laid in state across his ruined chest plate. Oath still upheld, even with his conscious mind fled. Awaiting answer. 

It didn’t take long for Kylo to decide. 

With a grunt he rose to his feet. The body of the Praetorian shifted slightly, cradling against his broad chest like a broken child. Kylo crossed the scarred and burnt floor, striding past the corpses of the past without looking back. He easily forced the doors to the throne room open before letting them slam shut behind him, entombing Snoke and all of his ugly legacy inside it. 

_ For good. _

* * *

The _ Supremacy’s _ largest medbay was already filled with casualties. Medics hastened about, lifting injured troopers and officers from stretchers onto beds, counters, all available surfaces. The air reeked of blood, filled with the moans and sobs of the injured and dying. 

When Kylo walked in, Praetorian laid across his arms, the chaos noticeably quelled. The medics closest to him stopped in their tracks, mid injection or bacta application, to stare. Kylo disregarded them, striding right up to the head medic. He was easily identifiable by his tight, stressed expression and the red bands striped on both sleeves of his coat. When he noticed Kylo approaching he froze, mid-directive, a sudden flash of fear cutting across his face. 

“L-Lord Ren,” the medic stammered, numbly signing off on a data pad and handing it to his assistant, “what...what can I do for you?”

“You will repair his injuries,” Kylo said without further preamble, thrusting the body of the Praetorian out towards him. The life force pulsing inside of him was still faint but hanging on tight, through either his will or Kylo’s own. “Get him a bed.”

A thousand questions flickered in the medic’s eyes, but he wisely kept them to himself. But not so wisely, he didn’t immediately acquiesce to Kylo’s demand. 

“I would normally admit him straight away, Lord Ren, but the medbay is filled to the brim. The Resistance, they—the _ Supremacy _ has suffered severe damage, we’re barely keeping pace with the casualties.”

The entire floor shook and rippled in emphasis, shockwaves still radiating from the impact in the crippled flagship. Kylo’s priorities, however, remained unshakeable; focused only on the Praetorian in his arms. He set his teeth on edge and glared at the medic. 

“Are you defying me?”

“Of course not,” the medic eked out, lying to protect himself. Kylo slitted his eyes. 

“Then get him a bed.”

“I-I apologize, Lord Ren, but we’re still awaiting definitive orders from the Supreme Leader, in the meantime we must adhere to protocol—”

Kylo straightened up and squared his shoulders, making his already impressive height and breadth downright _ terrifying_. He let the Force leach out of his body and mind, darkening the air around him and snaking around all those present like chains, forcing the chaos of the medbay to an uncanny halt once more. Kylo could see the medic visibly shrink in dread and regret even before he gritted out, voice ominous, caustic as fire: 

**“I ** ** _am_ ** ** the Supreme Leader.”**

Stunned whispering and even a couple whimpers of terror broke through the crowded medbay at that. Kylo ignored all of it for the time being, dark eyes burning holes through the medic, threatening to tatter his feeble mind if he didn’t bend. 

“You will obey me,” he growled, voice quieter but no less menacing. 

The medic nodded so hard his chin smacked against his chest. He put up his hands, eyes lowered in fear.

“We’ll get him a bed immediately Lord Re—Supreme Leader,” he corrected, bowing his trembling head. Kylo glared down at him, almost considered snapping his neck for his insolence and dropping his body out the airlock. It might help assert his authority in front of those gathered, if any still doubted the truth of his declaration. But the Praetorian in his arms was far more important than their trivial perceptions, or the miserable life of some medic. Kylo could always kill him later if he felt like it. 

No one had the power to stop him now. 

With the help of some attending technicians, the medic managed to squeeze two wounded stormtroopers on a bed far too small for both of their bodies, making space for the Praetorian to lie. Kylo didn’t wait for them to strip the bed down and refresh it with clean sheets, doubting they had any left considering the current crisis. He laid the Praetorian down carefully, letting his cracked helmet tip back against his bicep before it came to rest against the flattened medbay pillows. Kylo lingered to trace his fingers around the hole in the plastoid, tempted to touch the delicate, bloodstained skin around his now closed eye, but thought better of it and leaned away

“You will do everything within your power,” Kylo whispered, voice superficially directed at the medics, but steeped in resolve beyond their understanding. “He must not die.”

From that point there was not much for Kylo to do but wait. He didn’t stray too far from the Praetorian’s bed, remaining as a looming, shadowy aegis in order to safeguard him. Kylo realized he might be making the medics nervous, but he didn’t care. If they were at all skilled at their jobs, they would be able to save the Praetorian even as he watched. 

The medic mumbled something to his nearest assistant and cupped the Praetorian’s helmet, moving it with both hands. Kylo took in a sharp breath when he realized what was about to happen. He suddenly felt anxious, beyond his already frayed nerves. He licked his blood-chapped lips, feeling sweat bead against the nape of his neck. The sudden urge to close his eyes crept up inside of Kylo, but he found he couldn’t bear to tear his gaze away, even when the medic slowly pulled the helmet off of the Praetorian’s head. 

The breath Kylo had taken froze in his lungs, leaving him momentarily winded.

In between smudges of blood and bruising the Praetorian’s skin glimmered like a ghost of porcelain in the stark medbay lighting. All at once he looked like nothing and everything Kylo had expected. Much softer, _ younger_, but with an underlying severity that was impossible to ignore, even in repose. His face alone was a contradicted harmony of curves and edges, his cheekbones gaunt and hard but his jawline sloping to rest at a soft, rounded chin. 

A shock of red hair fell over his forehead, contrasting his pale skin though it lay lank and matted with sweat from his helmet. That hardly mattered, because the fact that the heretofore faceless Praetorian was a _ ginger _ delighted Kylo; something so unmistakable rare and human that it made his heart sing in unforeseen accord. An errant thought had Kylo wondering if he’d find freckles faintly dotting that lovely pale skin, if he ever got close enough for the Praetorian to feel the warmth of his breath. 

Kylo should have known by the eye in the throne room how beautiful his face would be beneath the mask. Even with it now closed, the Praetorian gave off an ethereal aura that enticed Kylo to touch him.

But he didn’t. 

For there was crack running up the right side of the Praetorian’s delicate face, splitting it from his cheek all the way down to the corner of his parted lips, the flesh around the wound bloodied and blistered by the unmistakable edge of a saber. Guilt twinged at Kylo’s heart and he retracted his hand, wracking his brain for his scattered memories of the throne room. Had he struck down a guard armed with only an elegant, basket-hilt blade? Or had it been the girl?

Kylo couldn’t recall. The truth would have to wait until the Praetorian awoke. 

_ If he ever did. _

Kylo watched the medic’s hands as they checked the injuries to the Praetorian’s face and neck, falling moment by moment into a trance. The throb of his own heart seemed to sync with the peaks and valleys of the machine monitoring the Praetorian’s pulse, as if trying to encourage it to keep steady. It was the only thing that kept Kylo grounded in reality as he awaited a prognosis. He had little awareness of how much time had passed before he sensed someone else approaching behind him—a captain, his uniform rumpled and singed, sweat gleaming on the verge of his receding hairline. 

“Doctor Kallen,” the officer called out as he rushed up towards the man in question, “High Command wishes to know how many casualties you are reporti—”

He froze when Kylo turned to glare at him, steps slowly halting. Unlike the medic, the officer seemed to understand right away. He looked far older than the medic, perhaps one of the ex-Imperials poached by the First Order. Likely well-adapted to power struggles and murderous coups. Kylo watched as the officer swallowed visibly and brought his hand across his chest, standing at attention. 

“Sir,” he revised, affecting the sort of professional obedience Kylo required right now, “damage to the _ Supremacy _ is extensive but temporarily stabilized. The Resistance’s flagship has been destroyed, but the dregs of their forces have managed to flee to Crait.” He tucked his salute back behind him and dipped his head. “All available hands await your orders.”

Kylo looked through him. His thoughts still swam with the beautiful, ashen face of the Praetorian, but nonetheless rage managed to cut across them once the officer’s words sunk in. Of course. He was the Supreme Leader now. All of the First Order belonged to him. Control over the tide of this entire war now rested in his hands. 

Kylo clenched them into fists at his sides and turned to face the officer fully. 

“Assess all operational walkers and transports,” he ordered. “Prepare them for immediate departure alongside anyone who can still hold a blaster or pilot a fighter.” Kylo’s face darkened, blood surging back up to an angry boil. “Gather all able superior officers aboard my shuttle.”

Surely that _ girl _was there with the Resistance. She probably thought she could hide, outlast the First Order and squander her potential for the sake of her pathetic allies. 

A foolish mistake, yet another in a sequence of many. It was almost pitiable. But this time Kylo would not hesitate. He would not negotiate. There would be no second chances, no hint of mercy. No lingering sympathy for their similar pasts. Even if it cost him his own life, he would slaughter her and the rest of the Resistance and leave their bodies to desiccate amongst the salts of Crait. 

A harsh whimper caused Kylo to stay his vengeance for a moment longer. With his orders given, he turned away from the officer to look back towards the bed. The medics had removed more of the Praetorian’s armor to help better assess his wounds but had yet to chip away the ruined chest plate. Kylo’s eyes skated over the marks, undeniably burnt into plastoid and flesh alike by a _ lightsaber_, before rising to linger on Praetorian’s face. Most of the blood from the skin had been cleaned but the wound from his cheek to his lips still gaped, flesh wide open and glistening. Kylo didn’t have to imagine the pain, the mark that would surely be left behind. He’d lived it himself. 

But both armor and flesh could be repaired, reforged into something stronger. Kylo imagined something enduring and beautiful filling the cracks in the Praetorian’s armor; perhaps glimmering gold inlaid in the sleek red plastoid, like a mineral leaching through stone, the overall whole made rare through its impurities. A resurrected treasure, a jewel of Kylo’s reign illuminating the path to their new future. Two fractured minds, fixed and fused back together and _ free_. 

Kylo leaned over the Praetorian’s body, not caring whether the officer nor any of the medics were judging their Supreme Leader’s unexpected gentleness. He breathed deeply, finally allowing himself to touch that precious, sacred skin. He brushed the Praetorian’s ginger hair off his forehead, before trailing his hand down to the soft bow of his lips. They were cooler than expected, but unmistakably alive. 

“I’ll be back,” Kylo said, thumb wet with a kiss of blood, “I swear on the stars I will.”

He withdrew and raised his gloved fingers to his own lips, feeling the breath of promise, of desperation and fealty, soaked into the tiny veins of the leather. 

“Don’t leave me,” Kylo whispered, taking one last look at his reborn warrior before stealing away. 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments would be much appreciated! I would like to know what you thought of the fic, as well as if you'd like to see more of this AU and Praetorian Hux in the future.
> 
> Hit me up on [Tumblr](http://thethespacecoyote.tumblr.com) and [Twitter](https://twitter.com/heir_of_breath7/).


End file.
